Inconsolable

by Ainslie Paton

  When she straightened up, it was to be swamped by a crowd of people streaming up from the train station. She pulled her arms in tight and tucked her head down as the mass of people split, going either side of her.

  A strong arm circled her waist from behind and eased her out of the way. Drum pulled her against the glass window of a shopfront, keeping his body between her and the crowd. She was inexplicably annoyed with him and ducked under the arm he had resting on the window to stand beside him.

  “I was fine.”

  He turned to face the street like she was doing and put his hands in the pockets of his jeans. They were loose all over on him and not long enough to fall over the front of his beaten-up runners, showing his bare ankles. A worse fit would be hard to imagine. But he wouldn’t let her buy him a cheap pair the right size and he was still weird with her, still needed an excuse to touch her and then when he did, he was so intense with it, he made her feel all kinds of inappropriate things that were better than chilli chocolate.

  “What made you give him money?”

  Drum frowned. “What made you?”

  “You.” Foley grunted her annoyance. She was angry with Drum because he’d given all his coin away, which meant he’d insist on walking back to the beach instead of taking the bus, and if she wanted to eat, she’d be doing it alone, because now even McDonald’s was out of his budget.

  “There are things you need, like a warm coat, a wool jumper, pants that fit properly, and you won’t let me help and you gave away your bus fare.”

  “He’ll eat tonight.”

  “And you won’t because you won’t let me shout you a lousy burger.”

  “Are you angry with me or yourself?”

  With herself because Drum had shown compassion when she’d been blind, and consideration when she’d felt nothing, and she knew so much better than that, but that was hard to admit and what boiled in her belly was shame.

  “With you. Because you’ll help a random homeless man before you’ll help yourself. It makes no sense.”

  “Ah, Foley.” Drum dropped his head. “I am a random homeless man.” He looked up and into her face. “You need to stop expecting me to be something else.”

  She opened her mouth to protest and the crowd around the busker erupted into whistles and applause. She glanced across. He’d switched from machetes to chainsaws, the noise of the engines revving distinct amongst the sounds of traffic and people. She knew the chainsaws would have a cut-off switch, that there was no way the busker would lose a hand or a leg to their teeth because she’d signed permits for performers like this, but most of the audience wouldn’t stop to rationalise it and the threat was a wild thrill.

  The performer was smarter than she was and Drum was right. She did expect him to be different because he was different to the other homeless man who, even from a distance, smelled of alcohol and days without washing.

  “Why is it wrong for me to want better for you?”

  She’d read up on the mental illnesses homeless people tended to have; post-traumatic stress syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, alcoholism, addiction. She’d known Drum long enough to know he wasn’t a substance abuser, but he was obsessed about the cave and the rules for living hard that he’d created for himself.

  She’d talked to a therapist at one of the local outreach centres. Drum might have an adjustment or depressive disorder, except that he didn’t show the most obvious symptoms of depression. He was obstinate but not withdrawn, he had no trouble making decisions and he looked after his health.

  He rejected small changes; warmer clothing and simple expenditures she was happy to share with him, she’d stopped mentioning the bigger ticket items. He was her friend and he lived in a cave because that’s what he wanted to do, because some mental imbalance, or personality disorder compelled him to, but it didn’t stop her wanting him to be different, to be a guy whose clothing fitted, who didn’t alternatively flinch or hold on too tight if they touched, who was relaxed enough to let her buy him a simple meal.

  In her heart she ached for him to be just that much more ordinary; to be a guy who talked on the phone, and sent text messages, posted his sunsets to social media and fell asleep on her sofa watching TV. Maybe he was addicted to games, maybe he never helped with the washing up, or changed the toilet roll, maybe he snored, but in all these things he’d be familiar, relatable.

  He reached for her hand and she gave it. His eyes swept her face with a look that made it hard to swallow. It wasn’t how friends looked at each other. There was nothing casual about it. It was the I juggle chainsaws for a living version of a look—dangerous, mesmerising, remarkable. Rad. And every time it happened it was more confusing. And it was happening more and more. His eye contact, initially fully fuelled by avoidance, grazed right on through glancing attention and shy awareness and was now gorging on acutely significant.

  He looked at her with such feeling, such desire, that she stopped caring about his clothes, his address, his reticence to be seen with her in public, and had to be reminded he was a most unusual friend.

  He squeezed her hand. “I guess my flaky male pride can handle you shouting me a Big Mac.”

  It might’ve been raining chainsaws that was so surprising.

  He laughed. “Don’t make a thing of it.”

  “Me?” She squeaked that, which was making a thing of it, but it was a first among other firsts and as delightful as his laughter.

  This whole expedition was another first. Until tonight he’d steadfastly avoided going anywhere off the beaches where they could be seen together. He’d told her straight up, it was no good for her, and they’d argued. Foley had accused him of putting conditions on their friendship and instead of angering him, spurring him to denial, he’d laughed, then promptly agreed to come with her into the city to watch how the city council staged a street dance festival as part of Youth Week.

  And now he was agreeing to let her feed him. It was irresistible. “You want fries with that?”

  He yanked her hand as he stepped away from the shop window, hauling her in his wake, but she knew he was laughing. And in McDonald’s he accepted one of their dinner meals, which included up-sized everything, without making a thing of it. It went some way towards soothing the self-loathing about her reaction to the homeless man, and her discomfort with Drum’s choices—but not all the way.

  She stole one of his fries. “You’re not the same as that man and you know it.”

  He chewed, swallowed and shook his head. “In the detail, no. He’s older, he’s an alcoholic, but in all the ways that matter, we’re the same.”

  They ate in silence. The restaurant was full: families with kids, a bunch of teens with ‘80s hair wearing fluoro colours, there were two bike cops in their tight jodhpurs and leather jackets at the counter, a guy in a hard hat, and a couple in formal wear in the queue. In his op shop clothes Drum was unremarkable, but she couldn’t accept his argument.

  “I looked at that man and saw misery. I walked past him because I didn’t want to have to deal with that. It’s too hard. I’m too weak.” She shrugged. It was complicated; shame, guilt, resentment all bound in together. “My money won’t help him enough to make a difference and yet he makes me feel responsible. He has no future without help. I look at you and see this incredible, intelligent man, who needs a haircut and some decent clothes, who needs help to—”

  “Be normal.” He said it like it was a prison sentence. You are sentenced to normal for the term of your natural life, no chance of release. She knew that because that’s how she’d thought of it; normal, ordinary, deadly.

  “What’s wrong with normal?” She couldn’t believe she was saying that. Felt the hypocrisy of it curling her toes.

  “I’ll never be normal, Foley. Aside from the fact it’s a concept without real meaning, what is normal anyway?” He angled his head at the punk kids. “Isn’t it just the current fashion? You want me to be like everyone else: a suit, a job, a mortgage, prospects.”

&nb
sp; “Would that be so terrible; warmth, comfort, enough food, walls?” A life more ordinary, one where they might fit together as more than conditional friends.

  “I had those things once but,” he shook his head, “I’m on the other side now.”

  She didn’t understand his rigid definitions of what he could and couldn’t have, the line he appeared to have crossed and the penalty he’d designed for himself to pay.

  She ached to ask about his life before the cave but she knew he’d shut down. Instead she said, “How about a phone so I can contact you?”

  He flipped the hand he had lying on the table over and she put hers into it. Friends touched this way, it was just hand-holding and it was fresh and new tonight and she liked it.

  “Are you going to live in a cave for the rest of your life?”

  He frowned. “Let’s go see this event, Foley.”

  “Quack.”

  He opened his fingers and released her hand. “I’m not ducking.”

  “Quack, quack.”

  He folded his arms. “We’re going to do this now? Argue about my future in Maccas on a Saturday night while the Village People and The Breakfast Club look on.”

  She mirrored his posture. “Just for that quip, yes we are.”

  “Why do I need a phone?”

  “Because that’s what friends do, they phone each other, they text. They don’t meet at the third beach pavilion on the right.”

  He almost smiled, but he must’ve figured she wasn’t joking. “Casual. That’s what you said. If I see you, I see you.”

  “That’s what I said. And you said nothing at all, but you’ve spent time with me all the same. And that was six weeks ago.”

  “Are you saying casual has a time limit?”

  She grimaced because hell yes, they’d moved on, they were in the city, they were holding hands, he’d let her buy him a meal, empty calories though they might be. She’d spent almost all of her leisure time with him and when she wasn’t with him, she was wondering about him.

  This was more than casual and the way he looked at her, the way his body reacted when she was near, none of that was casual. It was duelling chainsaws, it was leaf blowers breaking the peace of Sunday morning, and whatever Drum thought of his future, Foley would fight for it never to be begging outside a train station.

  She could do nothing for random homeless people, the ones in her council or across the city, beyond simple compassion, beyond supporting their rights, but she could do something for Drum. Never let him forget he had a future.

  “I’m saying friends can be more than casual.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  She threw her hands open, exasperated. She didn’t understand herself enough to explain it to him, but they’d moved beyond careless and spontaneous. “This, being in each other’s lives.”

  He looked around and she braced for him to deflect with another clever comeback, a semantic argument. He smiled in his slow, shy way. “This is good.”

  It was Maccas on a Saturday night, on the way to an event she wanted to check out for work purposes, but it was progress.

  It was progress when he held her hand on the street, when he used his size to make sure she wasn’t jostled in the crowd at the dance event, when he allowed her to pay his bus fare back to the beach and listened as she raved on about what was good and what was within her own scope to do better with a similar event of her own next year.

  And when she next saw him and it wasn’t for a run, he wore jeans that fit him, old and wash-faded, but at least long enough to reach his shoes, and that was progress too.

  18: Meteor

  It’d been a long time since Drum had to plan on pleasing another person. Not that Foley was hard to please. She was easy to please. Now. That’d happened somewhere after she’d given up trying to evict him and before they’d worked out their version of friendship.

  Being friends meant he took on extra labouring work and hunted out clothes from Vinnies that fit better. It meant he was prepared to leave the area, be around her in front of other people with less fear he’d dirty her reputation. It was simple things like strolling past the old Beeton house she loved to check it wasn’t more tumbledown, catching the bus together, riding in her car, lying in the park in the sun with a book each.

  It meant they touched. A definition of friendship he knew they’d stretched but was unwilling to think too much about, because having Foley near, being able to lay his hands on her, was worth more to him than he was prepared to admit to. It was a fresh kind of sanity, a new way of balancing himself in the world. As long as Foley, his bright star, his fixed point, thought he was tolerable, he could tolerate himself.

  She’d changed too. She’d stopped trying so hard to get under his skin, into his head. She quit pushing him to create a different future. She let it go. Like a meditation, she let the biggest of the questions she wouldn’t ask, he wouldn’t answer, rest. He knew they weren’t going away, they were in a kind of suspended animation, not real, not present, without meaning or influence.

  Some mornings when they ran together, he remembered that was simply another form of lying to himself, to her, but the necessity of seeing her, having her presence, overrode all his usual survival instincts and rules for living.

  She lay on his couch with a book, reading by the light of a kerosene lamp while he cooked. It was a cold night, but with the fire blazing it wasn’t too terrible and they were both rugged up. Foley in a scarf and beanie that deserved ski fields and mountain vistas, her own snowman with a carrot nose and pebble eyes. He was going to give her barbequed snapper fillets, did them wrapped in foil with lemon, following Paul’s instructions, along with baked potato and steamed vegetables. He had milk and cocoa powder. He had marshmallows.

  The irony of the fact he’d never cooked for a woman before amused him more than the fact she’d wiped the floor with him shooting hoops with a borrowed basketball. She was a bloody little hustler, telling him she hadn’t shot goals since she was a kid. He needed to roust up a deck of cards and tempt her into a hand of poker soon to see if she had game there as well.

  “What’s amusing you?” She’d put the book down, rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand.

  “This.” He waved a fork. He’d acquired two and they were metal. He meant the simplicity, but it was more than that, it was the lightness. What he felt when he was with her was an absence of the weight of remorse and culpability. Foley was the holiday he didn’t deserve, taking him away from the consequences his ambition had wrought. What he felt was joy and it was alien and compromising.

  “Drum, you okay?”

  He shook his head and moved a tinfoil parcel out of the flame. He’d thought denial, restraint, removing himself from the world would be enough to calm the temper, the restlessness inside him, allow him to go on when it seemed an impossible ask. Joy, happiness, comfort, security, companionship, all of those emotions belonged to worthy men. He was not worthy.

  “You look like you’ve seen your own ghost.”

  He wasn’t conscious of turning away from his makeshift barbeque, but he was facing out towards the ocean and Foley was standing beside him. A woman worth more to him than his next meal, his next morning, the percussion of his heart and lungs.

  He didn’t know how he’d allowed that to happen, or how long it would last, but he knew he was powerless to stop it.

  He turned to look at her. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I didn’t think you did but if you told me a scary story here at night, I’d make you walk me back to my car.”

  He did that every chance he got. She was prickly about it. Didn’t want to inconvenience him, undisguised code for not wanting to be patronised. She could walk to her own car, thank you very much. He’d like to have gotten her a newer, more reliable car. He still could, but like entering the house, logging on again, there would be a cost beyond money, and her outrage. It would break the rules and leave a trail.

  “I didn’t s
ay ghosts don’t believe in me.” Less and less over time, they’d lost their ability to haunt him, but it took no effort at all to call them up, feel the cold fingered edge of their disdain and blame. So many of them, confused and angry.

  She punched his arm. It did a better job of refocusing him on dinner than anything she might’ve chosen to say.

  The fish was good, the potato a little soft, the vegetables a little crisp, but nothing was leftover and Foley complained of being full. She lay back on the couch and he sat in front of it, on a folded blanket, his back against it, legs kicked out in front.

  “Are you going to tell me a ghost story or not?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll make you hot chocolate.”

  “Story first.”

  “Once upon a time.” He stopped. She thwacked the back of his head and he laughed. “You won’t like my ghost stories.”

  “I’ll like them better than your non-ghost stories, because they suck.”

  He half turned to face her. That was a not too gentle dig at the fact he didn’t tell stories at all.

  “Tell me something, Drum. Anything. I tell you everything. You know about Nat and Adro, Hugh, my parents, my stupid brother’s pregnant girlfriend. You know how much I love a doomed house. You know what colour eyes Gabriella has.”

  “Slow loris brown.”

  “See. I know only the most superficial things about you.”

  “The best things.”

  “You think the best things about you are your dreadful wardrobe, mediocre cooking skills and fresh air accommodation?”

  He nodded. “That about covers it.”

  Her smile collapsed. “That makes me sad.”

  It made him want to scoop her into his arms and hold her like he’d done while she slept and Mad Max rocked Fury Road. He didn’t want her feeling sad on his account. He put his back to her again.

  “How about this? How old are you?”

  He smiled. She’d be an excellent chess player. That innocuous question was designed to put him at ease again.